Editorial July 9, 1910 Issue

TO BE RATHER THAN TO SEEM

John B. Willis

No one can read the word spoken by "the faithful and true witness" to the church of Laodicea, as recorded in the 3rd chapter of Revelation, and meditate upon the kindred emphasis which Christ Jesus laid upon that manifestation of Truth which is known as genuineness, without acquiring a keener sense of how great a crime is cant.

Human life is full of varied kinds of imitation which we can enjoy and freely indulge in, since they are both convenient and harmless. They do no ill because they contain no element of deception; they do not tell a lie. The conversion of the otherwise bare walls of our bedchamber into the vistas of a flower-garden whose blossoms lure a sleepless thought, perchance, into the haunts of a fair and innocent seeming,—this and a hundred other like improvements of belief multiply the appeals of the beautiful without lessening in any degree our recognition of the sovereignty of the true. The artist, the builder, the taleteller,—all these continually resort to those conceits of expression, those fictions of statement, perspective, or symbolism, which serve to interest without in the least degrading.

The moment, however, one enters the domain of character and conduct, the demand for absolute sincerity is insistently imperative. Here the least unverity becomes deceptive, and, like the false note of the church bells' chime, it constitutes an unpardonable offense. The call of the Christ is to a perfectly honest, unaffected life and thought, and he alone can become superior to both praise and blame who is conscious of this integrity, of his loyalty in all things and in all ways to his highest concept of the demands of Truth.

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TO BE RATHER THAN TO SEEM

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